Thing never seem to stop changing.

Thing never seem to stop changing.

Since my last post:
Slept in my car
Played Carnegie Hall
Went on tour with Bucky Hayes and the Radio
Started and left two solo records
Have been asked to join and left by two bands
Lost My Uncle Randall
Sold two drumsets
Re-bought my first drumset, which I sold in college
Started producing a new tv show, Photo ID
Found out I may be playing in the Philippines to 20,000 people

So nothing earth shattering, but still, life changing.

I've rekindled my love for Douglas Adams with a copy of The Salmon of Doubt, love it though only 1/4 of the way into it.

Also my love for vinyl has once again been stirred by picking out my new record player I'm getting for Christmas from my parents.

I made a new tour video for Bucky as well, we recorded the song in Chapel Hill, NC with Nick Petersen at Track and Field Recording. We recorded four songs in one day and I've started mixing them at Rola Pola Studios. I think this is a great song...

what's going on?

I truly think I'm scared of just about everything.

I over react in most situations and over act in others, just kidding.

Someone told me this weekend they love staying up on current events, which I think for most people is great, for me its a danger. I hate the apathy of most people. I think that people are terribly ready to say how screwed up everything is but very wary about doing anything about.

FOR EXAMPLE
When former president Bush was said to have lost the election the people said in numbers, "Hey that's not right" then went about there lives of doing whatever to pay the bills. The same sort of situation happens in Iran and the people of the country take to the streets, cause a worldwide spectacle of themselves and their unwillingness to take what is handed to them. I stand with those who protested.

I guess I just needed to get it off my chest, to get a little more of my feelings out that you don't have to except what is handed to you. Make your life what you want it to be and break through the doors that stand in front of you.

Rant over. Sorry.

Music Minus Ego

Last night I went to The Red Lion in Manhattan for a special night of music. The band was "The Red Liners" a cover band, that was amazing. The drummer, Ryan's, girlfriend had just lost her father in a horrible car accident and last night was a benefit concert for her.

I saw some great local musicians, playing in the most cutthroat city, playing for something bigger than themselves. To me it really was a celebration of life, a coming together of artists to do something beyond them. The scene was set for greatness, and many of the performers delivered the goods, stepping up the the mic with power and truth in there voice. Onlookers danced the crowded room as more and more people stepped on the stage to lend their voice and lift the spirits in singalongs.

I stood in the crowd mixing with complete strangers, new, and old friends feeling like everyone got what was going on. So many shows I go to in NYC are total ego trips by artists, me included, that are the same formula:

1 Look sullen or shoegaze, try to real the crowd in
2Talk about how great it is to be playing the worst bar you've ever been in so maybe you'll get a free drink
3 play more songs about self righteous events in your life that changed everything (don't forget to self deprecate, but only slightly)
4 Mention your mailing list or Myspace or Twitter or something else people really don't give a crap about, someone once told me "If they like you, they'll find you"
5 Don't forget to thank the bartender, if nothing else maybe he/she will buy you a drink

Not to go off on the formula, but it didn't happen at this show. No one stepped up to the mic saying "Hey this is my new song about..." It was great. People actually playing music for music sake. I'm aware that it took a tragedy and a huge list of cover songs to make this happen, but it still happened. Making me think that if all of us who step up on a stage to ENTERTAIN people who paid to see us actually thought about what they were there for, maybe the music business wouldn't be so messed up. Maybe artist would be treated as such and not like small children. Maybe people would buy music because they liked it and wanted to support an artist instead of downloading it cause they aren't connected and don't give a crap.

Music minus ego. A concept that could save us all for MTV.

Chipotle - The Football of Food

On a random day four years ago, a friend asked me if I wanted anything for lunch. I was working at a small guitar shop in Greenwich Village were we often grabbed lunch or a snack for each other to save time and just to be generally cool to each other. I said sure, and to my happy surprise I was greeted but a bountiful foilwrapped burrito with everything just as I wanted it. I'm a picky eater. The idea of watching someone make my food right in front of me, in a Subway kind of way, is great for my more-of-this/none-of-that attitude toward food. After that day I became the maven of Chipotle runs at work, I actually started buying enough of the hot salsa and chips, I'd carry the extra salsa in a paper cup brimming with the firemouthed goodness. I'd go for a steak, chicken, or mixed (steak and chicken) burrito as many as 4 times a week, week after week.

My friends would give me gift certificates for Chipotle all the time, it was awesome!

I moved jobs to another guitar shop in the fast moving and uber-expensive Time Square Area. Lunches around the center of the universe are expensive, to the point were I thought I may need to stop eating lunch all together in order to pay my rent. Then... OH HAPPY DAY!!! A beacon of burrito goodness shows up on the very block I worked on. When others didn't want to brave the rain or New York cold, I'd run down the street and for under $10 we'd eat like kings.

I'm no longer a slave to the whip of anyone else, so as I maneuver through the big apple I visit my favorite burrito place as often as I can, knowing if I have a burrito, I may not need to eat for the rest of the day. Now I am a vegan, and my black bean burrito is still just as filling and delicious as I could ever want. I'm so glad that a company as big as McDonald's (who owns Chipotle) would have vegan and healthy carnivorous options in this world of crappy fast food that is never satisfying.

Why am I writing this? I don't know. I had a great, filling, and reasonably price outing today. Yeah! I may eat Chipotle again tomorrow, maybe not, but I will again enjoy the football of food.

Go Here:
www.chipotle.com
Vegan Options at Chipotle


"Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835–1910).

Arthur

One random Monday in Febuary Bucky, my upstairs neighbor bandmate and friend, knocks on my door and asks me if I was busy today... I not usually busy I spend most of my days watching car shows and Mythbusters or playing guitar with WAY too much reverb on. So he says, " I know you're not much of a dog person but would you mind watching Sugar (his dog) for a few hours?" I've never owned or taken care of a dog, most of my life I've been horribly scared of dogs in fact, but I felt like Bucky was reaching out to me, that he really needed me to do this solid, so I said sure. Sugar came down and we spent the day together. It had turned out, Bucky's other dog was passing and they were taking her to be put down, this is where the tears can start. I spent the day doing my thing, walking into my kitchen to do the dishes, talking to myself, playing guitar, watching tv, but I wasn't alone. I wasn't talking to myself for once, I'm not as crazy as you'd like to think. Anyways by the end of the day, I liked having a dog around, I actually knocked on Bucky's door the next day and asked if he wanted me to watch Sugar, he said it was gonna be home all day but he said thanks.

That night I told Vani I thought I may want a dog. Vani has always wanted a dog, though wanted to wait until she had a yard for it to run around in. Well if I was in, she was in. We immediately started scouring the internet for a great shelter dog that would make us both happy. We looked at picture after picture, emailing each other every hour or so from work the latest find from the far reaching corners of the world wide web, then on a Thursday, a new dog. At the BARC Shelter we found Arthur.

A purebred sheltie (think of a small collie, but more awesome) that had been found wandering the streets of Bushwick in Brooklyn, his top front teeth had been broken off, they think he may have been kicked or something. Vani went and saw him the next day and immediately filled out papers to adopt him. As part of BARC's policy, I also had to meet him before we could take him home. So the next morning, before going to work, we went and met Arthur. I sat down on the sidewalk and put him in my lap. I had a dog.


Vani took this picture that morning. She hates when I say it, but I really think he's my dog. As I spend most of my time at home Arthur give me a reason to wake up in the morning. He gives me a reason to go outside. He makes me feel more responsible. Maybe he's not my dog, he just my friend. He gets me going, you know. He makes me happy when I come home late and he quietly jumps up on me while Vani is fast asleep. I like having a dog. This last year of my life has been so strange. I've changed in so many ways. I recently took Arthur home to Virginia to meet my parents and brother. They could hardly believe I had a dog. Me, scared for so many years, holding a dog in my lap. I try to train him, but he doesn't listen. I try to carry him, but he hates it. I try to let him swin at the park, but he's scared. I guess I'll just let him do what he wants to do. He lets me do what I want. It's only fair.

Jay Bennett died in his sleep.

A lot of people don't know who Jay was, a lot of people know exactly who he is. Jay was 45. He was one of the many lead guitarists / multi-instrumentalists to play with the band Wilco. Jay wrote many of the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (my favorite record) along with Jeff Tweedy. Earlier this year he was trying to sue Tweedy and the band, he needed a hip-replacement that he couldn't afford, he had fallen out of the bright lights that had been his home for so many years.

A mad scientist of a musician, often linking multiple tape machines only he knew how to control through out the vast Wilco loft to create the massive bed of sound that gave the records he worked on the lush bed that made them so special. His work with the band on Being There, Summer Teeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and the Wilco/Billy Bragg record Mermaid Avenue was amazing. He played guitars, keyboards, pianos, everything. He's famous for buying and learning to play a Mellotron while recording Summerteeth and adding the famous Beatle keyboard to nearly every track because the band was so in love with the sound. His amazing lead work complimented by his sense of space and texture gave the band the sound I grew to love listening to the records as a senior at Pulaski County High School, it changed my ears. I had been listening to Rockabilly, Grunge, and Punk, but now here was music that spread out like a table in front of you with so many levels of sound to grab onto. It sent me into looking for sounds and no longer listening to the band in college. Bennett left the band in 2001. When I started to listen to wilco again after college, they had changed, I still like them but not for the same reasons.

Jay went on to make music. I saw him at a smallish showcase in Austin, TX a few years back. Last year he offered up his new record as a free download. Some things are magic, they work, fit together in a way that doesn't make sense but is perfect; that is what I think of the tension that existed in Wilco, bickering makes for good music and lousy relationships, which in turn makes better music and more intense lyrics.

I hate I never got to see play with Wilco. I saw the band play at Madison Square Garden on New Years Eve a few years ago with my girlfriend Vani, it was awesome, it renewed my love for a band I had stopped listening to. Shortly after that I bought the Wilco documentary I'm Trying To Break Your Heart as well as tracked down the documentary on the making of Mermaid Avene, and there it was the band that helped change my ears, being amazing, evolving, creating, and finally breaking up. All things end. I just wish they didn't have to.

While living in New York, I've met and hung out with Jeff Tweedy at a guitar shop in midtown, he was mixing Sky Blue Sky. He would tell me about the record, I'd show him the gems of Rudy Pensa's collection, and eventually he called me his "escape hatch." Just a few months ago bassist John Sirratt bought a vintage bass amp from me. Life is so precious and as we go through it, making connections, and letting people leave their finger prints on us, we change. We become everything we ever feared and loved in our fathers, we hear our mother's words tapping on the shoulder as we go into the darkness. Things we've seen, heard, and touch make us how we are. So Jay, wherever you are, you helped me become who I am. It may not to much, I'm sure you don't remember shaking my hand after you got off stage... but I do. I always use to think and pray that if I died, I'd die in my sleep; so I hope it wasn't too bad, and I hope you come back to Earth as a beautiful blue songbird.

My prayers go out to Jay's family and real friends who knew him.










sorry for the rant

Rocksalt Shotgun - Keep The Car Running ( Arcade Fire Cover )

This song is a birthday present for Maggie Kannan. Happy birthday Magpie!

Bucky Hayes and the Radio - Blindly

Watch this one in HD if you can, the detail in the pictures is stunning. The pictures are from Ron Hester, shot at Rockwood Music Hall at our CD Release Show. I really love this song.

Wilco Loves You

This is an old mug from my parents house...

This is the new Wilco record...

http://beta.wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/index.php

enjoy

Car Shows

In my often free days, when I'm not walking Arthur I'm watching a variety of car rebuilding shows on The Discovery Channel. I've been watching shows like this for a long while, one of my favorite shows all through college was Monster Garage. Well this morning someone was rebuilding a 1970 Ford Mustang Fastback, my Dad's was a 69 or a 70. I really want to to buy my Dad his, or a similar, Mustang for him to have to work on/rebuild in his retirement, if not just to have to ride around and enjoy. I would love to buy his exact one, a guy in Pulaski,VA owns it now and has had it under a tarp for years. My Dad told me he had it repainted, originally it was a pale yellow, now I think it may be green, but other than that it has just sat there. I just it I sold a few guitars I could scrape up the money, but I'm not sure he'd sell it to me, or for how much. For some reason this is all I can think of, my Dad smiling as he cruises down route 11 in Pulaski, window down, listening to the radio with my Mom sitting shotgun asking him to slow down. I don't think he'll ever slow down.

Pink Houses

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what John Cougar had in mind, a giant pink painted brown-stone in the middle of Park Slope Brooklyn. Now ain't that America, its something to see.

Everything that is going to happen...

So this weekend I had a show with two great bands, Hooray For Goodbye! and Dirty Excuse. The drummer from HFG broke her wrist so I was drafted. A few rehearsals later... rocking. This weekend I was also offered a new job as a Project Manager for the web business I was freelancing for, at first I was super happy took the job and starting training yesterday. But today after dealing with only 24 of work I was done. I have a really hard time getting into something just for money sake, sure everyone has a price, but this just wasn't me. I'd rather get paid peanuts for something I dig then get paid a bit for something I hated, and the training pay was horrid. So here I am continuing my freeform life. I was super happy that my video for "Flame" got 77 views this week, it made me feel like maybe I'm doing SOMETHING right. I really need good things to happen.

This week is pretty slim in the music world for me, so I may have to stretch out with another flame-like project.

This is one of my favorite songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU7YK6zW4nI

Its by Superchunk, a band from Chapel Hill,NC. I may do it...

I think I'm hyper enough as it is, I think I'm hyper enough.

Rocksalt Shotgun - Flame (Sebadoh Cover)

This is what I did Monday and Tuesday, two days to a new song and video.

Outside Of The World, In The Backyard

I edited a video today of me singing Outside of the World, from my record "Songs About Spencil." I filmed it all myself, mostly in the Kannan's backyard.
Check it out:



Last night I played a private party with Bucky Hayes on a roof top in Chelsea right down the street from Spin the Bottle. It was so much fun and I got a great shot of Bucky on my iPhone.


Bucky, Bobby, and I had a great time. Maybe I drank a little too much, but I'm not too bad today.

Bucky's Birthday and everything else...

Just got back from walking Arthur, another cool/damp spring day in Park Slope. I like living here, I miss the Upper West Side, but not much.

Yesterday was Bucky's birthday, and Willie Nelson's, so last night we headed out to Lobo's on 5th Ave in Brooklyn. They have the best Ancho Chili Margaritas, they're spicy and they have a ton of tequila in them, plus we put away lots of chips and salsa. I miss the cheese dip at that place though, it may be my undoing in this whole Vegan expeirement, that and Red Lobster adds, my mouth waters just thinks about them.

This week I've been recording at Casa Nova Studios with Matt Lenny. Lots of drum tracks, LOTS. The tracks were sounding good though. Hopefully this week we'll get back to The Devil's Playground for some more work with Andy Baldwin. The Not A Sparrow record is finished and available on their website for a listen.

There is a new Episode of Captured Life on my YouTube page:



Now, let make some lunch...

Thursday

Its Thursday, stop dreaming. This week has been mostly spent mixing and mastering the Not A Sparrow record. I really happy with it thus far but still have a few ruff edges to fix on it. Yesterday I was back at The Devil's Playground in Manhattan cutting some drum tracks and then back home to watch LOST. BTW, I hate when LOST does catch up episodes, that's the whole thing with that show is that you have to remember every little line. Finally, what happened to Rose and Bernard, where they killed in the flaming spears/time traveling episode? Where is Sun's baby, also hanging out with Claire's mom? I get so worked up about my shows...

Not A Sparrow, not yet anyway.

I spent most of this beautiful day mixing the first record by Not a Sparrow, a Charlotte, NC based band. My friend Bobby asked me to mix this band made up of former Miles Apart couple Phil and Rachel Hamrick along with their friend Christina on violin, and Bobby on bass, shaker, and some vocals. Its really inspiring stuff, lots of songs about happiness and moving forward with your life. I think God sent this record to me to tell me to get on with what I'm doing, or maybe He just knows I need some work. Anyways, this evening I nicked out to the park to get a little sun on my bones and tonight I'm going to my friend's wedding reception. Then tomorrow more recording!

Early Morning

So I woke up this morning at 4:45 am and I was freezing. The window got left open last night and it got REALLY cold. Finally I got up and closed it but then I couldn't go back to sleep. Today I'm mixing a record for "Not A Sparrow" then rehearsing with Bucky Hayes. Hopefully the turning tides of life will turn in my favor today.

I watched the new "Parks and Recreation" on demand, not impressed. Its just not that funny.

Death and Taxes

Today, like many I did my taxes. I know you may say, you waited until today? Yes, yes I did. I only received my tax forms a few weeks ago, and with the loosing of my day job, a trip to Virginia, and an overall break down of my life over the last few weeks, I did my taxes today. My poor dog, Arthur sat and watched as I did them, cursing at the computer scene without pausing to walk him. Finally I took my loving companion for a walk. Its hard for me to remember my life a little over a month ago. My day to day, my walks to and from work, where I would eat, how I'd space out my coffees, how many times I'd check with the computer about emails, but also how I got along without Arthur. I think Arthur's truly unconditional love he gives me makes me feel better about so many things. Hes laying in front of me now, sleeping I think, if I get up for a snack or a drink of water he jumps to his feet. Not because he thinks I'm going to take him out, just because he wants to be with me. Or maybe he just wants food.

Polaroid Go!

So Maggie gave me cool old Polaroid camera but now I need film...

We took the Kannanmoblie over to Target where Maggie has formerly gotten film, but alas no film. The trip was bust but at least I've got a camera.

Rainy Day Man

Its early, for me anyway, I got up this morning at 8am and started punching away on the computer. Last night my friend Jen from This Reporter bought me a matched set of mics for my studio. It was the nicest thing a non-family member has done for me in a LONG time. I'm realizing how lucky I am to be surrounded by generally good people who aren't out for themselves and are up for the common good. I didn't get a slot at the open mic tonight, but I think it may be for the best, they book months in advance and I'm booking day by day right now. I watched Amelie last night and loved the way it portrays everything, I think I'm going to start filming in a more artful way. It may blow up in my face, but most things do. Today I want to get a Polaroid camera. Wish me luck.

Start Here, Move Forward

Greeting from McLean, Virginia. I'm sitting at The Kannan Family's bar listening to Jenny Lewis' record "Acid Tongue." I've spent most of the morning listening to a Chess Records collection and thinking a lot about my life in Brooklyn. I love music and just need to listen to it more. As I spend this week traveling through Virginia heading towards my family's home in Pulaski, Va I'm going to listen to as much music as possible. I have an iPod full to the brim and hopefully it will shuffle up some good tunes for me. I've also been bugging the host of the Jammin' Java Open Mic trying to get a slot for tomorrow night, I hope it works, its been a long time since I rock and rolled, a long lonely time.